Blogs

So a friend gave me an old turntable he wasn't using and I went out and got a cartridge for it today. I can finally play those old LP's I have lying around!

It's amazing how good records can sound even after 20-30 years. Though some of them are a bit dirty, the sound is still crystal clear. I particularly enjoyed listening to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack from vinyl. The nostalgic feeling is just awesome.

Ahh well, time to sleep!

Well, we spent the morning migrating our mail server at work from Sendmail to postfix. It was an interesting experience. I'm actually surprised at how smoothly the migration went; most of the problems were compilation/sasl2/library issues that didn't really have much to do with the mail server configuration itself.

Postfix is pretty spiffy. I like its architecture; the fact that it uses multiple programs to receive and deliver mail. Its paradigm is very compatible with sendmail's (unlike qmail which does things WAY differently) and it's several orders of magnitude easier to configure than sendmail.

I guess zorin.org is next, eh? Heh, maybe not. Zorin.org's sendmail install has been rock solid. Why fix if it ain't broke?

It was a rather cold day at Sawgrass Recreational Park today, and due to this, not as busy as I expected. A couple of tour groups did come in, but not the massive after-xmas influx.

Junior was there, and was being rather frisky at first. A bit later when he calmed down, though, I sat down on the ground next to his "box", and he came over to me and climbed into my lap! He curled a bit sideways (he doesn't really fit in my lap, being over 90lbs already) and fell asleep.

He slept for 20 minutes in my lap, and kept me warm, too. He was purring on and off and he ocassionally turned around a bit and shifted positions. Unfortunately, my right foot started to fall asleep and hurt, so I had to get up. Awww...

Later on I visited the property and did the usual chopping-up-chicken and feeding the kitties. After that work was done, I sat right in front of the fence to Darlene's enclosure (a full grown tiger), and she came up to me and started chuffing and rubbing into the fence. At one point, my face was so close to hers, I could feel her breath on my face when she chuffed. It was definitely a "one with nature" moment. I stayed there for a few minutes, scritching Darlene and Tiffany through the fence. I sometimes wish I could get an invulnerability powerup in real life, so I could go in there and tussle with the tigers without risk of getting hurt. }:)

No photos at the property, but I took some at Sawgrass.

Link: A few photos at Sawgrass

Lynxie, lounging on the counter

Even though I have the much more expensive Canon EF 28-105mm USM, I can't help but extol the virtues of the cheapie 50mm f/1.8.

It's amazing how this $75 lens can produce such beautiful images. The control over depth of field is stunning, as is the pinpoint sharpness of the images.

If only they could make a zoom lens this good, at a reasonable price. Imagine an 18-300mm f/1.8 zoom. Yup, probably physically impossible, and if not, it would be rather large and costly, but one can dream, right?

The original full-resolution, much higher quality version of this image is in the Lynxie Pictures Archive.

I went to Sawgrass today; it's a half day since it's Christmas Eve and everyone just wants to go home. But I'm glad I did, as I got to meet a panther I hadn't met before, AND I got some cool photos in the process!

My friend Brian asked me to take some pictures of him with the panther, which is why there's so many of them.

Here are the photos,

and of course...

Here's my favorite of the day.

Happy Holidays!

So, you've all wondered what a tiger chuff actually sounds like? I've decided to post one so ya'll can hear it. The "chuff" is the sound tigers make when they're happy and affectionate. You can even chuff at a tiger, and he will usually chuff back in response. It is a great way to bond with them.

Here it is: Diana chuffing!

The tigers at VSW make this sound ALL THE TIME when people are around. They're happy to get attention, and of course, people being around means food is on the way, so that makes them even happier.

Tigers start chuffing when they are only DAYS old; I remember hearing Taj chuff when he was still a micro-tiger. It's so adorable!

Cougars can be vocal as well. One of the most vocal cougars at VSW is Mystique. Here's a sample of the sound she tends to make to try to get attention:

Mystique "meowp"ing!

You can hear her from quite a distance, too. }:)

-Z

Okay, this is pretty bizarre... and adorable, at the same time. }:)

http://zorin.org/share/kitten-music-video.wmv

The editing is a bit off in places (you can see a hand or two), but it's still funny and cute!

I work with someone who really pushes BSD a lot. I mean, we're talking obsessed over it to the point of sometimes being annoying. Anyway, I have no problem with BSD, but imagine my amusement today when we tried to get dialout PPP working on FreeBSD for him and...

...the kernel panicked right as PPP tried to negotiate.

I nearly lost it laughing right there! I've never had Linux pppd cause a kernel panic in my life!

Of course, all is forgiven; it was probably just a lousy kernel on the LiveCD, but it was still amusing...

P.S.: Isn't panicked an awkward word? panicked.. paniced.. no matter how you spell it, it just looks strange...

So today I went to Sawgrass Recreational Park at around 2:30PM. Junior the Florida Panther was there; he's always fun to play with. He was so playful today that he was difficult to handle at times! You should see him, chasing a blue ball around and pushing it out of range of his restraint so someone has to go get it for him. It's really true; dogs have masters, cats have staff. }:)

Leah was there, and decided to take some pictures of me using my camera. THANK YOU, Leah, if you are reading this, for the great pictures! They are posted on the site as usual; feel free to browse.

I managed to get a really cool shot of Junior yawning with his tongue curled up, and also took some pictures of the chinchilla, Penelope the Skunk, and the rabbit. Unfortunately, the pictures of penelope don't have quite as much depth of field as I'd liked, but the lighting was tricky and she was moving around WAY too much to use a slow shutter speed. Apparently skunks do this really cool forepaw stomp thing when they're riled up; it was rather cute so I tried to get a good picture of it.

All the pictures are posted at the VSW pictures site, feel free to browse and enjoy!

Later I visited the property, and found that Shoshauna was still there. In fact, no other animals had left the facility! I'm expecting Shoshauna, Nikki, Diana, Darlene, and Nat to leave within the next couple of days; it will be a sad day for me as the facility they are going to is a 2.5 hour drive from home and I won't get to visit them very often.

We fed the tigers ribs tonight. The nice thing about ribs is they're flat; you can shove the whole thing into the enclosure through a gap in the fence. I've found that it doesn't matter whether you can actually fit the meat through the feedholes; the tigers manage to make it fit once they grab ahold of it.

Fun fun fun!

So, I was browsing the merchandise in the Otakucon '04 dealer room, and saw this booth selling cool T-shirts. Of course, there was a "No photography" sign there, so I had to take a picture.

The funny thing is, I wouldn't have taken the picture if that sign wasn't there! I had to rebel against the silly paranoid booth operator who thought I could somehow damage his business by taking a photo of some T-shirts.

Oh well, here it is in all its glory. NO PHOTOGRAPHY! THAT MEANS YOU!!!